“Back to what Dusty meant to me, when I got shut down, when I was told officially, ‘You can’t wrestle anymore,’ it was the most heartbreaking thing I had ever experienced,” Graves recalled. “But I think that fight or flight instinct kicked in because I went, ‘Oh my god, I’m at WWE right now. I’m here at the Performance Center. Okay, I can’t wrestle anymore now, but what else can I do?'”

“I’m not going to let this opportunity go up in smoke, so I started doing everything. I started setting up the speakers and running sound at the live events for NXT, and anything I could get my hands on. Working with Dusty extremely closely, and then Cole revisited the conversation we had in New Orleans and said, ‘Hey, I want you to try commentary.'”

Graves explained that he sat down with the former Rich Brennan at the Performance Center and they would call dozens of matches over and over again as practice. Despite that, Graves said he didn’t feel that light bulb go off and felt self-conscious to take risks. After nearly a year, he felt comfortable enough to crack a joke or slip in comments that didn’t take away from matches.

Kurt Angle then asked if Graves was confident that WWE would find a spot for him, to which he said that he was not.